News of the Week (July 8th, 2018)

Gun Rights

The Ten Dumbest Things I Heard About Guns At The United Nations
For the past two weeks, I’ve been attending the Third U.N. Conference to Review Progress Made in the Implementation of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects – mercifully abbreviated as RevCon 3 for the PoA.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

Quiet Sun: More than 3 months without a sunspot
“The Belgian department of solar physics research (SIDC) says we are about to touch 100; that is, a hundred days in which we do not see spots on our sun,” says Italian meteorologist Dr Carlo Testa.

Seattle becomes first major U.S. city to ban straws
In one fell sip, Seattle on Sunday became the first major U.S. city to ban drinking straws, an environmentally friendly move that leaders hope will spark a nationwide conversation about small, everyday changes that people can make to protect the planet.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

From the ACA Bargain Bin
This is a great point: imagine how much more efficient and effective health care financing and delivery could be if instead of throwing all this cash at a few, selected carriers offering “one size fits all” (or none) policies, folks could choose the plan they want (if any), including Direct Primary Care and other options like true catastrophic pans.

War & Terror

The Sino-Mexican Influence in America’s Backyard
After receiving approval this past week, the Bank of China will become the second Chinese-owned financial institution with a presence in Mexico after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) began operations in June 2016. The Bank of China — Mexico and ICBC (Mexico) both state their strategic purpose as providing comprehensive financial services to support Chinese (largely state owned) enterprises operating in Mexico, which are expanding at a rate that should cause alarm within the national security community.

Bisexual “Gender-Fluid” 7th-Grader Leads Pride March in Maryland Capital
Recent news you might have missed: In steamy, rainy conditions Tuesday afternoon [June 19], a cluster of rainbows made its way through Annapolis. The city’s first official pride celebration – a walk from City Hall to the Loews Annapolis Hotel – started with a seventh-grader. Twelve-year-old Claire Drapeau has been out as bisexual since she was in fifth-grade at Crofton Middle School. This year after telling friends, family and classmates she also identifies as gender-fluid, Drapeau wanted to join in on a pride celebration. Instead of taking a trip to D.C. Pride as she planned, Drapeau told her mom she just wanted to walk around downtown Annapolis waving her rainbow flag and handing out stickers, which she saved up to buy herself.

Trump Rescinds Obama’s “Affirmative Action” Guidance
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are both reporting that the Trump administration will be rescinding Obama-era guidance on the use of race and ethnicity in student admissions (higher education) and assignments (K–12).

Land of the 86 Percent Free
Charles Cooke points out that a global panel of experts has ranked the United States among the bottom 10 nations worldwide for its treatment of women. International rankings depend heavily on the biases of the “experts,” of course, and they all love to dump on the U.S., though not always so flagrantly. Another example of this tendency is the annual “Freedom in the World” survey conducted by Freedom House (which was discussed in these pages earlier this year). In this survey, the U.S. is considered “Free,” but it lags most of its peers in that category with a so-so rating of 86 out of 100. Canada, by contrast, gets a 99, falling short only for its mildly deficient treatment of indigenous peoples. The Canucks receive perfect marks for free speech (which some might dispute), and the section on Canadian academic freedom reads, in its entirety, “Academic freedom is generally respected” (ditto).

McAdams defeats Marquette in WI Supreme Court
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of professor John McAdams, arguing that Marquette University “breached its contract with Dr. McAdams when it suspended him for engaging in activity protected by…guarantee of academic freedom.”

Incredibly rude nearby star system is firing particles at Earth like a “cosmic ray gun”
Our Sun is obviously the most intense place in our Solar System, but it’s actually pretty chill when compared to many other systems. Eta Carinae, for example, is a binary star system that sits around 7,500 light years from Earth, and it’s so incredibly extreme that when it fires cosmic rays off into space they actually manage to reach us here on Earth.

Economy & Taxes

It’s on: US, China tariffs take effect in new trade war
Is it Smoot-Hawley II, or an economic liberation? Both the US and China imposed punitive tariffs on each other’s exports today in what Beijing calls “the biggest trade war in economic history.” After a good jobs report this morning, the battle for market access and intellectual-property protection threatens to darken the economy just ahead of the midterm elections

International

Mexican leftist Lopez Obrador wins presidency
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador decisively won Mexico’s presidency on Sunday, exit polls showed, setting the stage for the most left-wing government in decades at a time of tense relations with the Trump administration.

Salvaging Brexit
Britain’s long-running crisis-cum-soap-opera over Brexit may be reaching its denouement today at Chequers, the prime minister’s country house, where the full cabinet is locked in a final debate on whether or not to accept Theresa May’s proposed terms for leaving the European Union. And “locked in” is the appropriate phrase. Ministers have had to surrender their cell phones on arrival; they have been told to expect the meeting to continue until 10.00 p.m.; and a Downing Street flack briefed the media that any minister who resigns will lose his official car straight away and have to walk three-quarters of a mile down the drive to pick up a taxi home.

Eliminating Identity Politics From the Schools and the US Census
Indeed, we think that the administration should stop collecting data, including in the Census, on artificially created ethnic groups, such as “Hispanics” or “Asians,” which bring together under large umbrellas disparate cultures and races. That would really cut identity politics off life support.

Among the Many Things Colleges Neglect to Teach: Freedom
Examine the course offerings at most of our colleges and universities and you will see an abundance of them hectoring students about all the real and imagined evils of America. On the other hand, you will pretty much look in vain for any that are dedicated to the Founding and our framework for liberty.

SJW Self-Destructs
Jessica Price was working for ArenaNet, a videogame company that produces Guild Wars. Like other videogame companies, ArenaNet has partnerships with some players who help promote their products online. One of ArenaNet’s partners is a Danish player who goes by the handle “Deroir,” who has a YouTube channel. So, Price posted a thread on Twitter about character development in role-playing games, to which Deroir responded with his own thoughts, and Price totally lost it.

The College Bubble Begins to Deflate
Not so long ago, the conventional wisdom in America was that just about everyone needed a college degree. Never mind that many students learned little of value and racked up big debts – unless you got a “college education,” your life would be nothing but drudgery.

How Socialism Can Ruin Your Life
In America, especially on the Left, socialism has begun to rehabilitate its well-deserved horrible reputation. In a poll last year, 37 percent of all Americans and 54 percent of liberals preferred socialism to capitalism. Another poll from last year had 44 percent of millennials saying they prefer to live in a socialist society while only 42 percent prefer to live in a capitalist society.

No, Ocasio-Cortez Won’t Be Another Obama — Unless Republicans Let It Happen
Conservative host John Cardillo and I launched into a friendly Twitter disagreement over the future of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the milliennial socialist who ousted a 10-term New York Democrat — when he warned Republicans not to underestimate or dismiss her. “We made that mistake with Obama,” he said. I disagreed.

Transgenderism is Ideology NOT Science!
Steven Crowder sits down with Dr. Leonard Sax to discuss the real science behind transgenderism, the danger of blurring the gender lines, and the real harm of transgenderism in children.